A light in dark places Bangor pastor uncovers Christian undertines woven throughout Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy

The novels of J.R.R. Tolkien captivated Brian Nolder long before he cracked open his Bible.

He was in elementary school in Ohio when he discovered the “Lord of the Rings” fantasy novels that have captivated millions of readers and, more recently, moviegoers.

It wasn’t until Nolder got to college at Ohio State University and started studying the Bible that he began to understand how much influence Christianity had on Tolkien’s work.

Nolder, 36, is pastor of Pilgrim Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Bangor and will talk about “Religion and the Lord of the Rings” at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 12, at Borders Books, Music and Cafe in Bangor.

“The Return of the King,” director Peter Jackson’s third and final film version of Tolkien’s trilogy, is scheduled to open across the country on Dec. 17.

“Tolkien was a philologist with a great passion for ancient myths and stories from northern Europe,” said Nolder. “‘Beowulf’ had great impact on him as a scholar. It is a story of pagan Europe, yet we know it was written by Christians in the Middle Ages. That was the model that he was trying to follow – to write in a fantasy era, allowing his Christianity to seep through.

“It’s very subtle, however,” Nolder said. “If you’re looking for religion in the ‘Lord of the Rings,’ you’re not going to find it by counting how many

times the characters go to church. They don’t.”

Born in South Africa in 1892, Tolkien was brought to England at age 4. He was educated at Oxford University, where he also became a professor of Anglo-Saxon and English language and literature.

He wrote “Lord of the Rings” in 1954 and 1955, but it was not until it was published in the United States in the late 1960s that it became a cultural phenomenon. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, died in 1973, about the time Nolder was learning to read.

Jackson tackled the trilogy in the late 1990s, turning each of the books into a live-action film. All three movies were shot together in 247 days in Jackson’s native New Zealand. “The Fellowship of the Ring” was released with much hoopla in 2001. “The Two Towers” was a box-office smash last year, and some theater chains already are selling tickets for “The Return of the King.”

Jackson, according to Nolder, seems more interested in the psychological than religious aspects of the story and its characters, and he focuses much of his efforts and effects on the battle sequences. However, Tolkien himself described the trilogy as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously at first, but consciously in the revision” in a letter published after his death.

Although Tolkien’s work often is compared with the fantasy novels of his colleague C.S. Lewis, “Lord of the Rings” is not an allegory as Lewis’ “The Chronicles of Narnia” is for the Christian Gospels, according to Nolder.

Tolkien’s faith is woven into the narrative structure of the books.

“Middle-earth is a Christian world and it works the way Tolkien understood the world to work according to his Christian faith,” Nolder said. “In ‘Lord of the Rings,’ we have as a backdrop the nature of evil. Elrond [an Elvin leader] even says, ‘For nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron [a good power who was corrupted] was not so.'”

Tolkien also created a world that was good but fell because of human rebellion similar to the Garden of Eden story, according to Nolder. The Christian notions of providence, humility and mercy also were woven into the narrative.

The author never spoke publicly about the connections between his faith and the trilogy, said Nolder, but wrote that his goal was “for the religious elements [to be] absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”

“Tolkien was not engaged in an evangelistic project,” Nolder said, “and reading the trilogy as a tract would be making an error. … I think the trilogy is an example for people that good storytelling can be a Christian calling.”

Reading Ring

Tolkien: A Celebration edited by Joseph Pearce, (London: Harper Collins, 1997).

Tolkien: Man and Myth by Joseph Pearce, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998).

J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey, (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000).

The Road to Middle-earth: How Tolkien Created a New Mythology by Tom Shippey, (rev. ed.; New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003).

On Fairy-Stories by J.R.R. Tolkien, published in “The Tolkien Reader,” (Ballantine, 1989).